Dan's comments (member since Nov 15, 2008)

Dan's comments from the Debate Religion group.

i blieve he is since we have all the greatest creation by god

What you've said here is that you know God exists because the universe, which God created, is great. So your proof that God exists depends on the assumption that God exists and created the universe. This is circular reasoning. You are using the conclusion as a premise. In fact, this is worse than circular reasoning, because you begin with two premises in order to prove one of them. You not only violate basic logic, but you actually through your proof reduce the amount of information that you have.

when i have aproblem and i think i cant get away from it i pray to god being sooo sure he will help and he does thats asign to me.

Oh yeah? Give me an example of a prayer being answered that is undeniable proof of a god. Does God ever reach his hand down from the sky? Does he ever do anything that could not happen any other way? When was the last time God violated the laws of physics for you?

Derek,

Nicole my comments had absolutely NOTHING to do with you nor did they have anything to do with sexual promiscuity -- the topic, clearly defined, was "mindlessness." Get a grip. I didn't insult you or liken you to Roman Polanski.

Actually, that's exactly what you did. You said, "Anyone who equates the love of God or the love of Thomas Aquinas with chemicals juggling about your brain and Sex in the City mindlessness deserves cell time with Roman Polanski." Well, this is exactly what Nicole did, so you just told her she should go to jail alongside a rapist. Classy. You also said, "I say she winds up single and pregnant (Sorry, Nicole. Cheap thoughts equal cheap dates here.) " To say that this has "absolutely NOTHING" to do with her or promiscuity is just a flat-out lie.

To say that someone belongs in prison with a rapist does have something to do with her. To say that someone is or gets cheap dates, and will end up single and pregnant, does have something to do with her. I don't know where you get off saying such insulting things about a person by name and then claiming they didn't have anything to do with her. If you want to say insulting things, go right ahead. But at least own up to it.

Now, I know you told me to go away (and find my own Internet, perhaps), and I had largely given up on this thread, and I suspect you dislike me, in part because I am unimpressed by the writers you quote, but, frankly, you need to be told that in addition to your other faults, you are also a liar.

Dan,you keep hammering the same things. I've made a good faith effort to explain the Chesterton quote. I'm sorry you don't understand it. What more can I say?

You just copied and pasted the article over and over. That's not much of an explanation.

Hopefully we have seen your final post.


How very polite. Is this what you guys call "turning the other cheek?"

Derek,

Dan you have me trying to get you to understand G.K. Chesterton. If you want to argue what he is saying, well, he's dead.

You're the one who introduced his quotation into the discussion. Now please stand behind it. You can't just say, "Hey, I didn't say that, he did. You posted it. You obviously understand it, or think you do, and want me to understand it, so why don't you explain it to me.

If you are trying to say that he makes absolutely no sense, then manifestly you are on the losing side of that argument. The man is an accomplished author.

This is an appeal to authority, and it's a logical fallacy. Essentially you're saying that I have to accept what he says (even though I admittedly don't know what that is), or accept that he is (and by proxy you are) right, just because he's "an accomplished author." Do you maintain that nothing has ever been published that doesn't make sense? Or that is factually or logically wrong? You've obviously never heard of The Secret. The fact that he's "an accomplished author" doesn't prove a thing about what he says, or what you say.

The point you question me on is not the point he is making; so perhaps we should leave it at that -- you didn't "get" it.

Or why don't you tell me what point he was making? It seemed to me that he was saying, among other things, that if evolution happened, or if there is no such thing as a soul, then there's no such thing as a man or an ape. What point was he making? Or am I not supposed to actually know what point he was making, but just be awed by his obvious but indecipherable "wisdom?"

I can't say it any better than Prof Haught does. It's the third time I've cited the argument. So let's drop that. I don't know whether your just not reading it or what the problem is.

You can't even say it in your own words, so you obviously don't understand it very much. He's making a disingenuous argument that science is the same thing as faith. This is simply not true. Faith is belief in things without evidence. Science is the opposite of faith. His argument is completely disingenuous.

I'm beginning to suspect that you don't really even understand these arguments you copy and paste. I think you just see that they're pro-Christianity, anti-atheism, and they seem impressive to you, and that's good enough. I don't mean this as an insult. It just seems odd to me that you'd rather people not even understand these incredibly wise men than go to the trouble of saying something you purport to understand in your own words.

Dan wrote: Where did I ask for scientific proof of the soul?

Dan wrote:Explain to me how it is necessary for something to have a soul to exist. Message 57, Dan.

So let's drop all that too.

This isn't asking for scientific proof of the soul. This is actually assuming that the soul exists and asking how it logically follows that it is necessary for something to have a soul in order to exist, which it seemed you claimed earlier. And nowhere do I use the word "scientific." You can offer any type of proof you like.

You're mixing and matching some things here. I gave you an in depth analysis of how Catholics view the Bible.

What am I mixing and matching?

You must have passed over message 21 where I addressed the misreadings of that passage.

I didn't pass over post 21; post 21 was what I was responding to, and what I was calling nonsense. Because it does not make sense. For example (and I don't know if these are your words or a copy-and-paste):

Namely that the transformation from ape to man was either a transformation from one thing to another OR it was from one blob of matter to another blob of matter, that with neither a form of spirited being per se, neither really existed as a real thing.

I don't remotely understand what this is trying to say. In this post you assert that (at least from an atheist's worldview) neither an ape nor a man really exists. That if something is not a "spirited being," it doesn't exist. Trying to prove to me that I necessarily believe that I, you, or apes don't exist is, yes, ridiculous. If you disagree, please, explain to me how it's impossible to establish that humans or apes exist without believing in God.

To impugn my faith as drivel or nonsense is an ad hominem attack on myself

No it isn't. You need to, perhaps, look up what an ad hominem attack is. It's an attempt to refute your claim by attacking your person. I'm doing the opposite: I'm attacking your claim, and your person is taking offense. Any claim that happens to hurt your feelings is not an ad hominem. If you took offense, I'm sorry, but you quoted a passage that does not make any sense. If it does make sense and I'm just missing it, then please, enlighten me. And a bit of advice: simply saying it's a matter of faith won't at all clear things up for me.

as to your demand for scientific proof or evidence of the soul or metaphysical concepts of being, that is a request to turn the unreligious nature of science into a religion.

Where did I ask for scientific proof of the soul? I reread my last several posts and found no such request. If anything, although I didn't find this request either, I would ask what your basis is for belief in the soul. Notice I did not say "scientific basis."

All this jive about "science is a method" is just that, JIVE.

No it isn't. Science is a method. You agree when in the next sentence you refer to "the scientific method." If you're claiming that science is something other than a method, then what is it? And please, in your own words; do not for a third time paste the paragraph someone else wrote about science being faith.

I don't know where I've supposedly said, "Science is the only way to truth," but let's examine that statement. To demonstrate this, you are defining science by your own terms, which makes it quite easy to prove that my (supposed) claim is false. But let's look at it another way. Science is simply a mode of thought. In a nutshell: We draw ideas based on observation, and compare those against reality; if they match, we hold them to be true, as long as they continue to match reality. So what is truth? Truth is, in a nutshell, an idea that matches reality. So, if we grant that I did in fact make the claim that science is the only way to truth, although I don't recall making such a claim, then let's at least grant that the only fair way to assess my claim is by using my definitions for the words in my claim. Therefore, my claim would translate to: "The only way to know what ideas match reality is to check them against reality to see if they match."

What is controversial about this claim? Without simply saying that faith exists, or that such-and-such is a matter of faith, explain to me another way for determining if an idea matches reality. Or, if you have alternate definitions of science, reality and truth, then what are they?

Because you keep reposting this same paragraph, though, let me take a stab at it. It seems to be saying that there are types of evidence other than scientific evidence. (This seems to rely on a redefining of the word "scientific," since scientific evidence is basically anything that can be observed.) It seems that this non-scientific evidence would be "faith." So belief is based on faith. But faith also is, by definition, belief. So basically, this quotation says that you believe what you believe because you believe it. That's a tight little circle.

Again, maybe I'm reading this paragraph wrong. It seems like an attempt to discredit science, both by redefining science and by declaring science to be "faith," implying that faith is bad. (Otherwise, calling science "faith" would be a compliment.) And then it attempts to say that science (because it is faith) is something totally different from faith? Or is less than faith? Or that faith is therefore scientific? The whole thing seems like smoke and mirrors to me.

Let me make a suggestion to you. When discussing religion, try not to rely too heavily on (or use at all) the word faith. It should seem obvious at this point that either we atheists have no idea what the word faith even means, or that the religious throw the word around to mean whatever they'd like. Also, it's a good idea to be able to make the same argument twice using totally different language; if your arguments rely so heavily on a single, special word like "faith," they're probably not strong arguments.

Thank you for responding to my post, although you did seem to ignore whole sections of it wholesale. I hope you get back to those points, if you have time.

I thought it was generally recognized that the bible was a collection (a library) of books, some of which are quite frankly of a fantasy nature.

I don't dispute this. The Bible is a hodgepodge of different writings, culled from an even larger set of writings. My point is that there's no way to tell which, if any parts are meant to be figurative. And at the time of the Bible's assembly, there was no way to determine which books should be included (were true) and which should be rejected (were false).

The only way to make these distinctions (true/false, literal/figurative) is to form a conclusion first. An idea is formed about the nature of God, based on nothing more than wishful thinking, and then that which does not adhere to the idea is dismissed as either heresy or metaphor. And it's worth pointing out that for centuries the stories in Genesis were not considered metaphor, and still aren't by a great many people. So, it's clearly not obvious, without the assumption that the Bible must be inerrant, that it is metaphor. So again, I'll ask, on what do you base your conclusion that Genesis is figurative? I don't mean, "How do you know that at least some of the Bible is figurative?" I mean, How do you know that Genesis, specifically is figurative? And actually, the other question is a good one, too: Just because the Bible is a collection of writings by different authors, how do you know that they were intended as metaphor, not literal truth that just happens to be mistaken?

They (biblical authors) did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language.

What is the basis for this conclusion? Nowhere in the Bible is it written, "The following passages are figurative." In my experience, the only way to conclude that such-and-such in the Bible is figurative is to begin with the conclusion that the Bible cannot be wrong; therefore, apparent contradictions between the Bible and reality must be the result of figurative language, etc., because that's the only way the pre-drawn conclusion can continue to appear be correct.

Now my good buddy Dan does that explicitly and is confident enough so that he can pronounce my arguments as drivel and nonsense. I'm lucky he condescends to reply to me.

I called something "drivel" and "nonsense" because it did not make sense. I asked you to clarify what it meant, if it was, in fact, logically coherent. You refrained. This is not my fault. I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt. Explain to me how one comes to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an ape or a man. Explain to me how it is necessary for something to have a soul to exist. In your own words. As long as you do not, I will assume that you can not, an observation that is consistent with my initial conclusion that the statements do not make sense and are, therefore, "nonsense."

Derek,

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you in a while; I've been away from the Internet for a few days.

That's perfect. Like I said, "default" is a kind of nowhere.

Either I don't know what you're asking, or you don't know what I'm saying. What do you mean by "a kind of nowhere?" Atheism is the lack of religious belief; it is not in itself a religious belief, nor, in fact, a belief about anything. It is just a word to describe a state of being whereby one lacks a certain type of belief. So, since this is seemingly unclear, maybe it would help if you could tell me what exactly you're asking about atheism?

were Science able to disprove God or prove God

Well, I agree that by definition a god (in a general sense) can never be disproved. But to say that since God hasn't been proved yet, then he never will, and that, by implication, he exists outside of the realm of science and that claims about God or religion can therefore not be questioned, is a bit disingenuous.

Faith cannot be verified by facts observable to all, because it deals with realities that cannot be measured the way claims are measured, and because the realities it engages demand personal commitment.

Calling the objects of faith "realities" seems dishonest. It seems like wishful thinking: I would like to believe that x, y & z are true, but I would not like to call them merely hopes and dreams, because that seems wishy-washy, so I will call them instead "realities of faith," which lends them more credence.

I've heard the argument before that the "beautiful" thing about faith is that it's belief in things with no evidence. What's so great about this?

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.

I agree that religion is blind, with or without science. But science without religion is not lame. I have no religion, and I love science. It lacks no meaning for me.

The biblical materials for a concept of God do not organize themselves. They do not automatically arrange themselves into a satisfactory form. They achieve that form only when the human mind, seeking to understand its own faith, begins to work on them and to set them out in more intelligible ways.

Compare the above statement you made (or copied and pasted) to the following paragraph:

The Bible is nonsense. It is inconsistent with both observed reality and with itself. It is chock full of immoral and reprehensible behavior, archaic moral codes and rotten descriptions of reality. It isn't corroborated by anything other than its own (and its followers') claims to its divinity and perfect truth. Since it is logically and demonstrably impossible that it is perfectly true, and there is no other justification for believing any of it other than the authority of its perfect truth, the whole thing should be dismissed out of hand. However, believing that there is a God makes people feel nice, so there is a second route one may take with the Bible. Simply decide in advance what you would like your conclusions to be. Build these conclusions around ideas like "God is great, all-knowing, all-loving, etc. Jesus died for your sins, you can live in eternal happiness, and so on." When you read the Bible with these pre-drawn conclusions in mind, underline anything that supports them. Ignore anything that contradicts your pre-drawn conclusions. Claim that these contradictions are the result of translation errors, taken out of context, the words of flawed humans and not God, or that the critic doesn't truly understand the nature of God, and won't until he accepts Jesus, whatever that means. Once you have constructed your own version of the Bible and replaced the original with it in your mind, you will "understand" the Bible; which is to say, you will understand what you invent, and you will call it "the word of God."

Now, I know you'll find the previous paragraph ridiculous and probably offensive. But I'd ask you to seriously consider it. Consider two people reading the Bible, one under my scenario and one under yours, and ask yourself, how would these to people be at all different. The two scenarios appear completely identical.

Where you WILL get an argument from me is when you use science to justify your religious views.

I don't know where I've done this, since I don't have religious views. What I can't stand, though, is when religious people, when presented with a problem with their religion's supposed truth, wave their hands and say, "Well, this is the realm of religion, not science, so your science is irrelevant." I only bring science into the discussion in places where religion makes a specific claim that can be addressed otherwise. Science is a method of inquiry; it is never inappropriate.

As for the idea of science being a kind of faith, I find that pretty ridiculous. Science is a method: you observe the world; based on these observations you speculate what might be going on; you design ways to test whether or not this speculation might be true; the more you fail to disprove your speculation, the more reliably (although always provisionally) you can hold it to be true. The only apparent alternative to this method is to cut out the testing bit and just make stuff up and hold to be true regardless of its consistency with reality.

All that science really is is the idea that the things we hold to be true should be consistent with each other and with continued observation of reality, and that we should always hold truths provisionally so that they can be replaced with better, more consistent ideas when those become available. To argue that this is "faith" is outrageously disingenuous. The basic principle of science is that a claim should be justifiable; religious folk disagree with this, while simultaneously trying to justify the idea that belief need not be justified. Christians, for example, use the scientific method all the time when trying to justify their claims: they go to the Bible, to theologians, etc., for support for their claims; they just don't do it very well, since they often ignore mountains of counter-evidence, and only then say, "Well, this is outside of science, so evidence is irrelevant. Unless I find some, in which case it will again become important."

I was unimpressed by your attempt to deflect your ad hominem attack of me by separating the content and character of my arguments (drivel, nonsense, etc.) with my person. Pretty weak.

I wasn't trying to deflect anything because I did not make an ad hominem attack. An ad hominem attack is an argument "against the person." I did not do this. I criticized some of your ideas, or the ideas of those whom you quote. I said that such-and-such a statement was "nonsense." I never attacked you.

An example of an ad hominem attack is to say, "What you just said is wrong because you are stupid." This is a logical fallacy, because obviously a stupid person can say something correct, so calling the person stupid proves nothing. It's something quite different, though, to say, "What you just said is stupid." Obviously, some things can be stupid. If I were to say, "Pigs are made out of chocolate," that would be pretty stupid. And just because I've said something stupid, that doesn't mean that I'm stupid. I know plenty of intelligent people who from time to time say stupid things.

Your apparent definition of ad hominem implies that nothing can be nonsense, nothing can be ridiculous, etc. To take this to the nth degree, everyone's ideas must be true, because to say otherwise would be offensive.

If sometimes I find an argument so ridiculous or tired or whatever that I don't bother fleshing out a response because I (erroneously) assume that the ridiculousness of the statement is obvious, then I can be accused of laziness (which I will not deny), but I cannot be accused of an ad hominem.

Claiming you are a "default position" doesn't go very far in explaining what that position is.

It's a null position. It's the lack of a position. It's the blank slate on which a religious position would be drawn, if I had one. Imagine your attitude towards Hinduism or Greek mythology or Scientology, and just extend it to cover all religions, and you will have my position. I don't really know how much further you want me to go in explaining what the "position" of atheism is, or what its "basis" is, unless you ask a specific question.

a Godless universe equating to nothing is a logical position to take from my point of view.

Equating a godless universe to nothing doesn't make logical sense, unless you are a pantheist and think that everything in the universe is part of God, but you claim Christianity and not pantheism. I was a Christian for many years, and never concluded that Godlessness equated to nothingness. If you remove God from the equation, how does nothingness follow?

So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God?

Why do they have to? Until there's empirical evidence for God's existence, there's no need to scientifically investigate the details of any supposed god.

Just to make sure we are all on the same page could you confirm for me that is, in fact, the choice that you would make also.

The atheism choice of those five listed choices seemed, on my quick read-through, most consistent with my views.

BTW how you argue things (character) has a great deal to do with your credibility.

I haven't used any ad hominem attacks. I have attacked only the content of your posts. You copied and pasted a paragraph from an article, and I found it to be drivel. It is not a personal attack for me to point this out. If I am mistaken, and there is some logically coherent message I should be getting from this "nonsense" about apes and men not existing, then it should be easy enough for you to prove me wrong and explain it to me in your own words rather than get offended that I called it drivel.

You made a number of assertions in a previous post, and I questioned or challenged these in my post. You haven't answered a number of my questions or challenges, but instead have focused on a small fraction of what I wrote. When you make an assertion, I question it, and you do not defend it, I'm going to assume that you agree with me that the assertion is baseless.

By the way, if you're unsure of what an ad hominem attack is, calling me immature is one example.

So what do you base your atheism on?

Atheism doesn't have to be based on anything. Atheism is the default position when religious belief systems do not have any basis.

if the mind is mechanical, thought cannot be very exciting

Why? I find thought very exciting. I find evolution very exciting. I find the way the universe works very exciting.

if the cosmos is unreal, there is nothing to think about.

Who said the cosmos is unreal? The leap from "God probably does not exist" to "nothing exists" is a pretty gigantic leap. Also, it's pretty easy to disprove the statement "there is nothing to think about," since I am thinking.

But if it means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him to change into. It means that there is no such thing as a thing

This entire paragraph is drivel. Which is perhaps the point. For some people, if something is confusing enough, it must be mind-blowing and prophetic. But all it really is is drivel. There's obviously such a thing as a man, and an ape. I am a man, and have seen an ape. If the point of the paragraph is that the distinctions "man" and "ape" are somewhat arbitrary, then so what? What does that prove? But I don't think that's the point; I think the point is to throw down a bunch of words and hope the intellectually clumsy trip on them.

with neither a form of spirited being per se, neither really existed as a real thing

Are you saying that for something to be a real thing, it must have a spirit? This is nonsense. Begin by proving that the spirit exists, and then we'll talk.

Most atheism sees the world as meaningless matter.

Straw man. I'm an atheist, and the world has a lot of meaning to me. It just doesn't have ultimate meaning, because ultimate meaning cannot exist. Meaning cannot exist without context.

The scientific materialist/atheist is the one who emerges from the roomful of monkeys and typewriters with the first act of Hamlet.

Again, untrue. The monkeys will only produce Hamlet if there is selective pressure whereby Hamlet has greater fitness than non- or lesser-Hamlet. Don't criticize evolution if you don't understand it.

You're constructing a straw man when you say that our brains are a big fat nothing. Sure, our emotions are nothing but synapses and chemistry, but so are our perceptions, and our consciousness. It all exists within the context of that "nothing." So maybe love, or good, or evil don't exist in an absolute sense, but they exist within the same world within which I exist, so to me they are real.

I associate atheism with scientific materialism, the construct that all that exists is matter, so if all you can do is subscribe to a world view that only sees billiard balls (the purposeless random matter of the scientific materialist) haven’t you really debunked yourself?

This seems like an overly simplistic view of atheists. Just because we do not believe in magic does not mean we don't believe that happiness, love, hate, fear, etc., exist. Just because these things have a basis in brain chemistry, etc., doesn't mean that they don't exist. So of course there can be good people and bad people, good events and bad events, and so on. Just because it's a world of billiard balls, that doesn't mean that we stand above the billiards, looking down on their meaninglessness; rather, we exist within the context of the billiard balls.

Do I believe in evil and good how? You have to define the terms before I can say whether or not I believe in them. I believe, obviously, that acts can be defined as good or evil. I don't believe in, say, evil as a mystical, independent force.

I would say the atheist would respond to that by denying it outright. Good and evil is a Christian concept (along with many other religions I'm sure)so if the atheist wishes to say it is all a human invention and has nothing to do with him, who is to argue?

Most atheists still believe in good and evil. They're adjectives. Who doesn't believe in adjectives? We might not believe that evil is some sort of independent force that somehow spreads from the biting of an apple, but we certainly believe that you can look at something someone is doing and describe it as evil.

Sarah,

It takes faith to be atheist as much as it takes to believe in any god. Why? because we just don't know 100%

We have stated repeatedly that atheists do not believe with 100% certainty that there is no god. In one breath you claim to understand it, and then in the next breath you return to arguing against it.

provisional belief sounds like intellectual jargon.

I have explained several times what a provisional belief is, as have others. You don't believe in unicorns, despite the fact that you cannot prove they don't exist. If you saw a unicorn, or a unicorn skeleton, or a reliable picture or video of a unicorn, you'd probably start believing in them. So, your belief that unicorns don't exist is provisional. Just because you don't know what a word means, that doesn't mean I'm pulling some intellectual kung-fu.

ok, to clarify, athiests think that God doesn't exist for sure, just like people who think that God does exist for sure right?

No, and I explained as much in my first post. We simply lack a belief that a god does exist. Furthermore, the default position, absent evidence for something, is to assume provisionally that it doesn't exist. This isn't the same as having 100% certainty that it doesn't exist, it's simply acknowledging the reality that if you have no evidence for something, you act as though it doesn't exist, because otherwise you'd have to believe in anything that could be, by definition, non-falsifiable (e.g. unicorns, leprechauns, faeries, vampires, etc.).

-above is you describing your beliefs

The provisional belief that there is no god is the same as the provisional belief that flaming rabbits are not going to fall from the sky this afternoon. It is a null belief, hardly a belief system.

The basis on which we choose a belief system cannot be through evidence

Why not? By what rationale is belief in things without evidence superior to belief in something with evidence?

Conclusion: Many atheists have a belief system (they believe there is no God). They believe in something that has no evidence as much as other religions.

No they don't. Atheism is not a belief system. It has no doctrines, tenets, etc. It is the null state of having no religious belief system. Atheism is a religion the way bald is a hair color.

Atheists don't typically believe with 100% certainty that there is no god; they just do not believe that there is. There's a difference. Atheists believe provisionally that there is no god the way you believe provisionally that there are no unicorns, dragons, werewolves, leprechauns, faeries living in your attic, teapots orbiting earth, invisible flying snakes that follow you around, or any of the infinite number of other preposterous things that, by definition, cannot be disproved.

This type of criticism of atheism puzzles me. Even if it were true that atheists have a belief system, what would that matter? Is the logic that if atheists have a belief system, then all belief systems are correct, therefore, there is a god? Or is it just some form of philosophical neener neener neener?

Plenty of people have tried to tell me that as an atheist I have a belief system, a religion, a faith, etc., but never once has anyone been able to tell me what those beliefs are.

I agree with what Charity said in post 6. When I hear about "former atheists," I think one of two things:

1. They never really were religious to begin with; they weren't so much atheists as they were non-participants. They may not have practiced (or given much thought to) religion, but they also didn't have much religion in there lives - directly or peripherally - against which to react, so they probably didn't walk around thinking, "I'm an atheist." If you asked them questions about religion at this point in their lives, they probably couldn't give very involved answers.

2. They began religious, and then became "nervous atheists," fed up with religion for one reason or another, or feeling compelled to leave their church or religion (but not God), but still believing in and fearing God all the while. Maybe they entertained some thoughts about God not existing or religion being a sham, but these thoughts probably made them frightened more than anything else.

Of course, it would probably be hypocritical of me to say that a "former atheist" was never a "real atheist," because that's exactly what Christians say about former Christians. But I do find it hard to fathom that someone could be re-convinced that God exists. However, I also find it hard to fathom that any adult could believe in God in the first place, so what do I know?